The DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign funneled cash to ex-British spy Christopher Steele to help them “challenge the validity of the outcome” of the 2016 election in the event Clinton lost, according to a new British court filing.
Steele, the author of the Democrat-financed anti-Trump dossier alleging Trump campaign collusion with Russia, said in court that he was hired by Democratic law firm Perkins Coie so they would be able to contest the results of the election should Clinton lose, the Washington Times reported.
So, long before the Democrats and the media caterwauled about President Trump’s suggestion in October 2016 that he might not accept the results of the election if Hillary Clinton won, the Clinton campaign and Democrats were conjuring up an intelligence disinformation campaign to actually undo the results of the election if Trump won.
This information was initially contained in a sealed August 2 declaration in a defamation lawsuit against Steele brought by three Russian bankers – Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, and German Khan — in London. The trio’s American attorneys recently filed Steele’s answers in a separate libel lawsuit in Washington, D.C., against Fusion GPS, the shady investigative firm that worked with Steele to dig up dirt on Trump.
“Fusion’s immediate client was law firm Perkins Coie. It engaged Fusion to obtain information necessary for Perkins Coie LLP to provide legal advice on the potential impact of Russian involvement on the legal validity of the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election,” Steele wrote in a sealed declaration. “Based on that advice, parties such as the Democratic National Committee and HFACC Inc. (also known as ‘Hillary for America’) could consider steps they would be legally entitled to take to challenge the validity of the outcome of that election.”
https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1074782906365685760
The Democrats never filed a challenge, but the fact that it was on the table suggests that the Clinton campaign considered Trump to be a much stronger candidate than they ever let on. It also suggests that Clinton was willing to do whatever it took to secure the presidency. In the end, the intelligence wasn’t strong enough for her to challenge the election, but it was good enough for Democrats to use it to hobble Trump’s presidency with deep state leaks, media hit jobs, and a special counsel investigation.
The U.S. intelligence community concluded that Moscow interfered in the election by hacking Democratic Party computers and stealing emails that it released via WikiLeaks.
No Trump associate has been charged with collusion.
In a previous court filing in a second case in April-May 2017, Mr. Steele said his job was to find links between Trump associates and Moscow.
Hired by Fusion in June 2016, he wrote a 17-memo dossier alleging a “extensive conspiracy” between the two, which two years later hasn’t been proven publicly by special counsel Robert Mueller or Congress.
In his most recent London court filing, Mr. Steele is defending against a libel lawsuit by citing a discredited story about a computer server, Trump Tower and a Russian bank.
Steele accused Fridman, Aven, and Khan, the three Russian oligarchs who control Moscow’s Alfa-Bank, of paying cash bribes to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
After the Russian banker’s lawsuit was dismissed by a D.C. Superior Court judge, their lawyers filed an appeal in U.S. District Court and attached Mr. Steele’s August declarations given in the London court.
“Internet traffic data suggested that a computer server of an entity in which the Claimants have an interest, Alfa Bank, had been communicating with a computer server linked to the Trump Organization,” Steele alleged in the dossier.
However, the Alfa-Bank story, much ballyhooed in the media, ended up being just another discredited fake news story.
When it began appearing on social media in 2016, some online sleuths looked at the server’s IP address and other data. They traced the server to a location outside Philadelphia that spewed marketing spam.
A Trump Organization official told The Washington Times last year that some of the spam went to Alfa Bank employees who perhaps stayed in Trump hotels. That’s how Alfa turned up in some emails.
The New York Times investigated and said the FBI basically came to the same conclusion.
Mr. Steele didn’t mention the server theory in the dossier itself.
Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn R. Simpson did try to sell the idea to the Justice Department, despite The New York Times’ finding. He met with then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr.
Trying to prompt an investigation, Mr. Simpson told him the Times story was wrong and the server was used for direct communication, according to Mr. Ohr’s notes turned over to Congress.
Several MSM outlets, as recently as two months ago, were still flogging the debunked Alfa-Bank conspiracy theory.
Steele is facing another defamation suit in London, this one from Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian entrepreneur and provider of computer servers to thousands of clients.
In his final December 2016 dossier memo, Mr. Steele accused Mr. Gubarev of actually performing the hacking on Democratic computers under duress from Russian intelligence. He said in a court filing that the allegation came from unsolicited call-ins.
Gubarev, who denies the allegations, is also suing BuzzFeed, the website that first published the dirty dossier in January 2017.
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